Ibn Taymiyyah

Seek (beneficial) knowledge, because seeking it for the sake of Allah is worship. And knowing it makes you more God-fearing; and searching for it is jihad, teaching it to those who do not know is charity, reviewing and learning it more is like tasbeeh.Through knowledge Allah will be known and worshiped.”

-Ibn Taymiyyah

Once there was a lady named Taymiyyah and she was a scholar. In her family there were many scholars but was Ibn Taymiyyah was most prominent amongst them. He therefore got this title Ibn Taymiyyah due to his contributions towards Islam. Various contributions came from his grannie Taymiyyah. The family had a tremendous history of contribution towards Islam.

During the tartar’s invasion of Iraq, everyone was afraid of a huge attack from the tartars, resulting in a mass migration. They heard news that tartars are burning the entire Islamic library of Baghdad. At that time Ibn Taymiyyah was a small child but his family and parents were already amongst the Nobel scholars of Islam. They decided to migrate and piled up their entire collection of books in a cart and decided to move. Since they knew the worth of the knowledge and books, they pulled the heavy cart with their own hands.

These books were the inheritance that Ibn Taymiyyah received. Through him, we’ve been able to get superb collection of our knowledge to the current day. Those books that were saved within the cart made Ibn Taymiyyah a scholar, Who then went on to jot down 591 books in his life of sixty seven years! The Muslim world got 3 of the foremost outstanding and nice scholars from the followers of Ibn Taymiyyah. They were Ibn Kathir, Ibn Qayyim Jauzi and Dhahabi. That was the inheritance that ibn Taymiyyah left behind: knowledge and scholars

Ibn Taymiyyah got the knowledge of Islam from his family from a very young age. Once his father took some children to a garden but Ibn Taymiyyah refused to go with father. When his father came back Ibn taymiyyah told him that during this period he had memorized a whole book.

During his life he went to jail three times. It was due to complains of so called Muslims. First time he was arrested at his house where he was allowed to meet the people. He did counseling and gave fatwas and spent his time in preaching Islam. During his second imprisonment he was put in jail for about a whole year.

He noticed incorrect concepts were getting rooted into the minds of people. So in his book titled Al Aqeedatul Wasitiyah he wrote about tawheed. This book was a master piece. He started writing book after Asar prayer and by Magrib he was done with writing this book. He not only wrote about truth, but also focused falsehood by speaking and writing against it.

When he died there were 300,000 people gathered to pray for him. Ibn Rajab told that he got news that Gayabana salatul Janazah of Ibn Taymiyyah’s was also offered in Yemen and china too.

He took his imprisonment positively and completed teaching Qur’an around eighty times in jail. Such was Ibn Taymiyyah. May Allah shower His mercy upon Him.